Here is the truth. As President Obama was campaigning on the imminent death of al-Qaida, those with access to the bin Laden documents were seeing, in Bin Laden’s own words, that the opposite was true....

This has been a very revealing week for America. We now know that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used her private email from a private server in her personal home to conduct official diplomatic business for four years.

We now know President Obama has obstructed access to the Bin Laden raid materials by intelligence professionals in order to manipulate the political dialogue and messaging.

Now we are facing a potential non-transparent negotiation with a nuclear Iran.

We have little knowledge about why four Americans were abandoned to die in Benghazi.

We ask ourselves, how and why was ISIS allowed to grow and fester like a malignant cancer right under our nose?

These are troubling times in the Republic — but what is more troubling, who will stand up to this absolute lawless tyranny and deception?

However, her characterization of the disturbing situation whereby Clinton, as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration set up a secret server in her home to accommodate personal email addresses for government business as merely "the Hillary Clinton email brouhaha, an unforced error" is misguided and misleading. The growing body of evidence points to a premeditated, thoroughly executed Clinton strategy to break the rules (and possibly the law) and hide information while potentially risking national security. On the CNN website, Borger attempts to convince Democrats to downplay the "unforced error" as a means to salvage their best 2016 hope for the White House. The journalist instructs Democrats appearing on CNN and other media outlets: "Your job is to defend Hillary Clinton, not bury her." KEEP READING

The group of a half-dozen youths trapped a ten-year-old boy in a wooden cage, doused him with gasoline, and set him on fire. They even re-enacted the Islamic State leaders passing judgment on the Jordanian pilot and ordering his immolation. Luckily, the boy’s screams were heard in time, and he was rescued by villagers. He went to the hospital for treatment of the burns on one of his legs.

“The vote Tuesday is just the latest chapter in a long-running saga between Democrats and Boehner,” French wrote. “The Ohio Republican is often forced to turn to Pelosi to deliver votes when legislation, like government spending bills and increases to the debt limit, fail to garner enough support from Republicans. That gives Pelosi, who has watched her caucus sink into the deepest minority Democrats have experienced in decades, an unusually powerful hand in times of crisis.”

...Boehner’s office vigorously denies that any deal with Pelosi took place.

...Pelosi’s office hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

...“Boehner is joining moderate and liberal Republicans with Democrats to cobble together a left of center majority in a Republican House,” Gaston Mooney, the executive editor of Conservative Review, told Breitbart News. “All this in an attempt to marginalize the majority of his own party. The question is how many times can Boehner marginalize the majority of his own party before he completely loses support, and thus his speakership.”

Mooney’s not alone in raising the question of just how much rope Boehner has left before he hangs himself with these Democrat deals. Technically, on Tuesday, to pass the bill to fund executive amnesty after spending months saying he wouldn’t, Boehner violated the so-called Hastert Rule yet again. As such, it’s worth revisiting what Denny Hastert—the Boehner predecessor for which the rule is named—said when Boehner first began flirting with using Democrats to achieve his big government agenda.

“Here is the problem. Maybe you can do it once, maybe you can do it twice, but when you start making deals when you have to get Democrats to pass the legislation, you are not in power anymore,” Hastert, who served as House Speaker from Jan. 6, 1999, through Jan. 3, 2007, said in a Fox News interview when Boehner used Democrat votes to pass the fiscal cliff deal through the House in late 2012.

“When you start passing stuff that your members are not in line with, all of a sudden your ability to lead is in jeopardy because somebody else is making decisions,” Hastert added. “The president is making decisions, Pelosi is making decisions, or they are making the decisions in the Senate. All tax bills and all spending bills under the Constitution start in the House. When you give up that responsibility you really give up your responsibility to govern, and that is the problem.”

Aboard Air Force One, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest indicated that President Obama probably found out about the Hillary Clinton email scandal from “the newspaper.” Earnest admitted he had “no idea” when Obama learned that Clinton was exclusively using a private email account based on a home server but that he “wouldn’t be surprised, however, if he had learned about that by reading the newspaper.”

The White House learned in August that House Republicans knew Hillary Clinton had been using her personal email to conduct official business as Secretary of State, Politico reported Friday.

It was then that officials at the State Department first noticed the personal email appeared in a document being provided to Republicans has part of their investigation of the Benghazi attacks, according to the report.

Hillary Clinton supporters have defended her use of a private email account to conduct official State Department business by arguing that she emailed colleagues at their government addresses, ensuring that a copy of the correspondence would be retained on government servers and available to archivists. As it turns out, some aides to Hillary Clinton also used private email addresses. But even if Team Hillary's initial claim had held together, it wouldn't matter. Public records laws encompass not just correspondence with other government employees but also emails with third parties about government business.

That's why a particular email flagged by J.K. Trotter is important. Back in 2013, a hacker secured access to the private email account of Sidney Blumenthal, a staffer in Bill Clinton's White House. The hacker sent screenshots of his inbox to various news outlets, including Gawker. "According to those screenshots, Blumenthal was regularly sending Clinton what appeared to be freelance intelligence reports—including information and advice about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya—all of which clearly fell under the rubric of official State Department business," Trotter writes. "At the time, Gawker noted that Clinton’s apparent use of the non-official account likely violated federal regulations governing records retention, and sent inquiries directly to Clinton and to the White House asking if messages to the clintonemail.com address were being retained."

Gawker also "filed a FOIA request with the agency for all correspondence to date between Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal," Trotter continues, "specifically including any messages to or from the hdr22@clintonemail.com account." We now know that email address did, in fact, belong to former Secretary of State Clinton. Had she been following the rules and forwarding all email about official business to government servers, the State Department would've found the Blumenthal email. They found nothing.

Hillary's email games as SECSTATE created a paradise for hackers, and for God knows how many foreign intel agencies. http://t.co/DNeDVFTy7y

But then, isn’t everything? First up, Mother Jones declares your mother’s advice that you eat three healthy meals a day to be totally racist, you guys. As Tom Blumer writes at NewsBusters, “Leave it to a writer at Mother Jones to dispense condescending healthy eating advice while serving up a side dish of alleged historical racism with a tincture of capitalism bashing”

Friday, March 6, 2015

Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress was notable in two respects. Queen Esther got her first standing O in 2,500 years. And President Obama came up empty in his campaign to pre-emptively undermine Netanyahu before the Israeli prime minister could present his case on the Iran negotiations.

On the contrary. The steady stream of slights and insults turned an irritant into an international event and vastly increased the speech’s audience and reach. Instead of dramatically unveiling an Iranian nuclear deal as a fait accompli, Obama must now first defend his Iranian diplomacy....

Change the deal, strengthen the sanctions, give Israel a free hand. Netanyahu offered a different path in his clear, bold and often moving address, Churchillian in its appeal to resist appeasement. This was not Churchill of the 1940s, but Churchill of the 1930s, the wilderness prophet. Which is why for all its sonorous strength, Netanyahu’s speech had a terrible poignancy. After all, Churchill was ignored.

Almost three decades after the implementation of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, many California companies are still finding themselves embroiled in lawsuits or out of business altogether over alleged ADA violations.

With that in mind, Assembly Republican Leader Kristin Olsen has made ADA reform a pillar of her legislative agenda. Olsen, who represents Modesto, is one of three Central Valley lawmakers this session to file bills aimed at curbing predatory ADA lawsuits. Her proposal, Assembly Bill 54, would give small businesses 60 days to cure an alleged violation if it is related to a construction standard that changed in the past three years.

...There are over 2,500 ADA-related building requirements currently on the books, making it a significant challenge for many businesses to keep up. The law has also created a cottage industry for lawyers and others who use it to effectively shake down an allegedly noncompliant business by demanding money in exchange for not filing a lawsuit. Even if an accusation is unjustified, many small businesses pay up anyway because it is cheaper than the legal fees necessary to defend themselves in court. Other business owners without the cash to either make expensive building upgrades or pay off litigious attorneys simply close their doors for good.

To combat that, California lawmakers have enacted a handful of reforms over the years to discourage such predatory litigation. The last came a few years ago when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill barring lawyers who send businesses “pay or litigate” letters from demanding a specific dollar figure. Results have been decidedly mixed: preemptive payment demand letters are down, but actual lawsuits are way up.

...He not only granted virtual amnesty to millions in contravention of Congress’ authority but also created new, substantive rights for the immigrants, from Social Security numbers to driver’s licenses. These rights could have far-reaching and material consequences, such as giving tax credits to millions who have lived here illegally. If that doesn’t outrage you, you don’t have a pulse, or you think the Constitution should have no greater weight than the sheets of paper it can be printed on.

In implementing Obamacare, he granted exemptions and suspended deadlines at his sole whim and even granted federal subsidies to people in states that had not set up an exchange, in direct violation of the law, as his advisers have admitted.

People have probably forgotten by now Obama’s radical czars, whom he appointed to serve with all the power of Cabinet officers but without being confirmed by the Senate. Then there was Obama’s planned defiance of the Senate in moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to U.S. soil — in Illinois — despite the Senate’s having voted 90-6 against such a move. Also, don’t forget his unilateral reversal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay service members, his Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory end run around Congress to regulate carbon because Congress had refused to pass a cap-and-trade bill, his lawless subordination of secured creditors in favor of his union allies in the Chrysler restructuring scandal, and his defiance of a federal judge’s order invalidating his imperious ban on deep-water drilling. There are many more examples.

Most recently, and quite disturbingly, Obama has signaled his intention to consummate a nuclear arms deal with Iran without so much as conferring with the Senate — much less getting its approval, as required by the Constitution’s treaty clause in Article 2, Section 2.... KEEP READING

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who saved Obamacare in 2012, rarely spoke up during the session, while Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the court’s most frequent swing vote, expressed serious concerns about both sides’ arguments.

The justices are slated to decide the case, known as King v. Burwell, by June, and it seems certain that the administration will have to win the support of either Justice Kennedy or Chief Justice Roberts to prevail.

According to documents obtained by Larry Klayman at Freedom Watch, as a result of his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, Secretary Clinton and her closest staff members were the likely sources of the leaks to New York Times reporter David Sanger. Klayman also said the FOIA documents show that those leaks were coordinated with the Obama White House’s national security team, which included Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett.

...Assembly Republicans are touting a set of proposals echoing changes that have been attempted at the national level and in states across the country, often sparking fierce fights and antagonizing teachers unions. The bills will likely face a tough road in surmounting the California Teachers Association’s considerable clout in Sacramento.

The proposals include a bill repealing the “last in, first out” rule in which inexperienced teachers go first during budget-driven staff reductions; a bill extending from two years to three how long it takes to win tenure and allowing teachers to lose tenure if they receive poor evaluations; and a bill from Olsen, requiring annual teacher evaluations that incorporate test scores and student feedback and would give teachers one of four ratings (many districts now rate teachers simply satisfactory or not satisfactory).

“The evaluations that take place, if they do take place, are really meaningless,” Olsen said.

“I can’t give you a date when it will fall, but China’s Communist Party has entered its endgame.” So says one of America’s most experienced China watchers to a small table of foreign diplomats at a private dinner in Washington, D.C. The pessimism from someone with deep connections to the Chinese government is notable. Washington should start paying attention if it wishes to avoid being surprised by political earthquakes in the world’s second-largest economy.

The China scholar at my table is no conservative. Nor are the handful of other experts. Each has decades of experience, extensive ties to Chinese officials and is a regular visitor to the mainland. No one contradicts the scholar’s statement. Instead there is general agreement.

“I’ve never seen Chinese so fearful, at least not since Tiananmen,” another expert adds, referring to the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy student demonstrators in the heart of Beijing. When prodded for specifics, he mentions increased surveillance, the fear of being investigated and increased arrests.

Just as there is no dissent from these views, there is unanimity on the cause of the new atmosphere of fear: President Xi Jinping.

The endgame of communist rule in China has begun, and Xi Jinping’s ruthless measures are only bringing the country closer to a breaking point

...Despite appearances, China’s political system is badly broken, and nobody knows it better than the Communist Party itself. China’s strongman leader, Xi Jinping , is hoping that a crackdown on dissent and corruption will shore up the party’s rule. He is determined to avoid becoming the Mikhail Gorbachev of China, presiding over the party’s collapse. But instead of being the antithesis of Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Xi may well wind up having the same effect. His despotism is severely stressing China’s system and society—and bringing it closer to a breaking point.

There’s a new chapter in the familiar Clinton dodge, this one written by Hillary. On Monday The New York Times reported that Mrs. Clinton stubbornly refused to use a government email account during her tenure as secretary of state, choosing instead a private account to better hide her emails. This likely violates the U.S. Records Act, and we’ve seen this kind of Clinton subterfuge before.

The Associated Press reports that Mrs. Clinton’s private email server is registered to one Eric Hoteham, a name connected to presidentclinton.com and wjcoffice.com, an address no longer in use. Bill Clinton (aka wjc) used this address when he was in the White House. Fast forward 14 years, over to Benghazi and through the woods, and the email address for Mr. Hoteham is traced to the Clinton residence in Chappaqua, New York.

With the assistance of technology, Mrs. Clinton kept all manner of emails under wraps, including those related to the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi. The New York Times reports that in 2012 congressional investigators asked the State Department for a wide range of documents, but did not get all of them. Last month, the House committee investigating Benghazi obtained 300 of her emails relating to the attacks. Mrs. Clinton had earlier released about 50,000 pages of government related emails that had been stored in her private account.

The London Daily Mail reports that at an Emily’s List gala Tuesday, when reporters asked questions about her extensive use of a personal email address during her four years in Foggy Bottom, Mrs. Clinton changed the subject. Channeling happier thoughts and chortling to the audience of adoring female fans, she asked: “Don’t you want to see a woman president?”

In other words, State Department policy was very clear. Using a private email outside the State Department's secure system was completely unacceptable. If this applied to ambassadors, one would think it was sensible policy for the Secretary of State as well.

Toward the end of Wednesday's oral arguments in the latest Obamacare case to make it to the Supreme Court, Donald Verrilli, U.S. Solicitor General, argued that the administration's interpretation of the healthcare law was the most deferential to states. The argument, apart from coming from an administration that has consistently asserted a robust role for the federal government, was a bid to win over Justice Anthony Kennedy, a key swing vote, who raised concerns about the federalism implications of the suit....

Verrilli argued that the law's text "is designed to afford state flexibility" and that the challengers' interpretation would contradict this. He added, "It would be an Orwellian sense of the word 'flexibility' to use it in the manner that petitioners say the statute uses it, because it's the polar opposite of flexibility." The implication was that this would be preposterous.

In truth, Orwellian semantics are a standard aspect of Obamacare, a law that's named the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" even though in reality it has triggered the cancellation of individual health insurance plans, narrowed choices of doctors and hospitals, and jacked up the sticker price of insurance.

If you want to get a sense of how Orwellian the law actually is, just look at the section cited by Verrilli — 1321. It promises "state flexibility," as he noted, but starts by instructing the secretary of Health and Human Services (a federal official) to "issue regulations setting the standards for meeting the requirements" for states creating exchanges, offering health insurance through the exchanges and managing risk in the insurance market. It also says the federal government can impose "such other requirements as the Secretary determines appropriate." So any state that sets up an exchange must abide by a mountain of federal regulations and that it can only offer insurance policies that meet the federal definition.... KEEP READING

In a speech delivered last month to commanders and other personnel in the Iranian Air Force, whom he described as “officials who have very sensitive occupations,” Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—Iran’s Supreme Leader and commander in chief—boasted that Iran had enriched uranium to the 20-percent level.

At the same time, the Supreme Leader noted that his government had agreed to shut down its production of 20-percent enriched uranium “for a while” in its effort to reach a deal with United States and other foreign powers that would include lifting the sanctions now imposed on his country....

In his speech to the Air Force commanders, the ayatollah followed his assertion that Iran had been able to enrich uranium to the 20 percent level by accusing the U.S. and its allies of being “greedy” in negotiations for a nuclear deal and asserting that the “Iranian nation will not submit to greed and tyranny.”

The audience of Air Force commanders and other personnel responded to this with a chant, according to an English-language transcript produced by BBC Worldwide Monitoring and available through Nexis.

“Allah Akbar [God is great],” they chanted, according to the BBC transcript. “Khamenei is the leader. Death to the enemies of the leadership. Death to America. Death to England. Death to hypocrites. Death to Israel.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s systematic evasion of federal recordkeeping requirements involved both the use of private email addresses and a server system installed in her Chappaqua manse. The servers, according to the Washington Free Beacon, may have been set up by shady longtime Clinton lackey Eric Hothem – under a false name (Eric Hoteham) slightly varied from his true name. It may also have been designed to give users the ability to erase emails without a trace.

Shannen Coffin’s excellent column today points out that Mrs. Clinton’s Clintonesque shenanigans not only appear to be a clear violation of the Federal Records Act; she may also have violated a federal penal statute that makes it a felony for the custodian of government records to conceal or otherwise tamper with them.

I think there are other potential criminal violations as well. We don’t know enough about the former secretary of state’s emails yet to make a judgment about whether they involved classified matters – which could trigger liability under the espionage act (which governs the maintenance and severely limits the permissible disclosure of national security secrets). It is hard to imagine that no classified matters are implicated, but let’s set that aside for the moment.

As I have pointed out before in connection with government leaks, the embezzlement statute (Section 641 of the federal penal code – Title 18) may also be relevant. Embezzlement generally refers to the theft of money, but the federal statute extends the concept to cover government records and other property as well. ◼ KEEP READING

The cover-up was exposed March 3, the same day that top GOP leaders pressured GOP legislators to pass a toothless budget bill for the Department of Homeland Security, which doesn’t block funding for Obama’s unpopular and possibly illegal amnesty.

'Humans need to explore, push beyond current limits just like we did 45 years ago'

Aldrin, 85, spoke before a packed house Tuesday at Macky Auditorium on the University of Colorado's Boulder campus.

"America must be the world leader in human space flight," he said. "There is no other area that clearly demonstrates American innovation and enterprise than human space flight."

Aldrin made history with Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969, when the two men became the first humans to step foot on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. In total, they spent 21 hours on the lunar surface gathering 46 pounds of moon rocks. Some 600 million people watched the historic scene on television.

The Obama administration’s Operation Choke Point program targets gun and ammunition dealers and tries to make life “miserable” for businesses that it doesn’t like, a payment processor told a Choke Point victim in jarring new audio.

Operation Choke Point is a program by which the Department of Justice works with other administration agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to force banks to shut down accounts of businesses that it objects to. The program purports to fight fraudulent businesses, but has instead targeted many gun and ammunition dealers and other lawful businesses.

Audio obtained by the US Consumer Coalition and provided to The Daily Caller presents the latest disturbing example of Choke Point’s overreach....

“Well, they’re doing it by fiat. They’re doing it without a legislative process. They’re just doing it on a rather, you know, directed basis of their own free will,” Bacon said.

“We’re going to make your life miserable. Instead of auditing you once a year we’re going to audit you four times a year,” Bacon said, taking the voice of an Operation Choke Point investigator. “If we find anything negative we’re going to write it up and then you’re going to incur increased cost increased focus with your board of directors and from other banking regulators. And they all run scared because they’re all sheep.”

It remains unclear exactly who set up and maintained the private email server for Clinton, but the AP traced it back to Eric Hoteham – a mysterious identity that “does not appear in public records databases, campaign contribution records or Internet background searches.”

However, Hoteham’s name is listed as a customer at the Clinton’s $1.7 million estate on Old House Lane in Chappaqua. The records have been registered for the Internet address for her email server since August 2010 and Hoteham is also listed as someone associated with the website “presidentclinton.com” and a defunct address for “wjcoffice.com.”

As of Wednesday, several fake Twitter accounts had been created representing the “Eric Hoteham” personality.

Operating her own server would have afforded Clinton additional legal opportunities to block government or private subpoenas in criminal, administrative or civil cases because her lawyers could object in court before being forced to turn over any emails. And since the Secret Service was guarding Clinton’s home, an email server there would have been well protected from theft or a physical hacking.

Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said panel members knew Clinton used personal e-mail accounts during her tenure but didn't learn until recently that all of her State Department business was conducted outside normal government e-mail channels.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Clinton avoided official e-mail accounts and may have broken federal rules about maintaining government records....

"You do not need a law degree to understand how troubling this is," Gowdy said.

One Hillary Clinton ally believes the New York Times owes Clinton an apology.

David Brock, known for his loyalty, went on Morning Joe Wednesday to come to Clinton’s defense.

Brock called Michael S. Schmidt’s article about Clinton using a private email address while Secretary of State “sloppily done” and demanded a retraction.

Instead, the reporter doubled down. Schmidt reported Wednesday that when Clinton was asked for emails related to the Benghazi scandal, the State Department did not hand over any emails from Clinton’s personal account.

Brock said the media was not treating Clinton fairly. He blamed the paper for accusing Clinton of breaking the Federal Records Act without full proof.

The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward rejected Brock’s argument.

“I’m sorry, but this kind of sounds like a non-denial denial,” Woodward told Brock.

"The reality is [Clinton's] probably the most famous liar of all time. He and his administration did some very good things, of course, but I could never get this Monica thing completely out of my mind and it is subtly incorporated in the painting," the artist told the newspaper.

Shanks said that the mannequin was present while he was creating the portrait, but not while Clinton was posing.

He added that the dress "represents a shadow on the office [Clinton] held, or on him."

Lewinsky's blue dress was a focal point of the Clinton scandal, which first broke in 1998. In sworn testimony, the president initially denied that he had had sexual relations with the White House intern, who at the time of the encounters was 22.

After Lewinsky submitted a blue dress with a semen stain, Clinton publicly admitted that he had an improper "physical" relationship with the intern. Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives but acquitted in a subsequent Senate trial.

"Barack Obama is a community organizer. He’s a rabble rouser. He’s an ideologue. And, he’s an appeaser… What Obama wants is a like-minded leftist in Israel, and they’re there, to work with to accommodate his agenda. Now, I would be very careful about his agenda if I were a leftist in Israel. Since there’s been more genocide, more rape, more enslavement under this president than any president in modern history. You know I think back to Reagan. Reagan was a liberator. He liberated hundreds of millions of people under the Soviet Union. This president is the imprisonment president. Society after society is collapsing. And, he’s making nice with Iran which is an Islamic terrorist regime."

1. Gives billions to left-wing causes: Soros started the Open Society Institute in 1993 as a way to spread his wealth to progressive causes. Using Open Society as a conduit, Soros has given more than $7 billion to a who’s who of left-wing groups. This partial list of recipients of Soros’ money says it all: ACORN, Apollo Alliance, National Council of La Raza, Tides Foundation, Huffington Post, Southern Poverty Law Center, Soujourners, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women.

2. Influence on U.S. elections: Soros once said that removing President George W. Bush from office in 2004 was the “central focus of my life.” He put his money where his mouth is, giving $23.58 million to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating Bush. His early financial support helped jump-start Barack Obama’s political career. Soros hosted a 2004 fund-raiser for Obama when he was running for the Illinois Senate and gave the maximum-allowed contribution within hours of Obama’s announcement that he was running for President.

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